


Man on the Moon

by VeteranKlaus



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Klaus Hargreeves Whump, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 14:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18551242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: An alternate take on Klaus with Hazel and Cha-Cha.





	Man on the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Literally just Klaus whump. Torture and injury and gore, so beware.

At first, when he's still high, Klaus can make light of the situation. It's hilarious, quite frankly. Bloody hilarious. Out of all the people in that house, they captured the one useless, clueless one; and hell, they can't even use him for bait because no one would come! It's hilarious. Ben doesn't seem to think so but Ben's always been so serious anyway, so that doesn't count. Plus, he's dead, so that automatically means that any disagreements he has with Klaus don't count.

Anyhow, at first he can find the humour in it, even when they rough him up a little. When Blue holds his head to the side with a hand in his hair so Pink can put out a cigarette against his neck, Klaus can choke out a joke about Blue _liking it rough_ , and then he'll laugh and it'll break off to a yell at the initial pain, and then turn back to a laugh. Pink will slap him and he'll say,  _dear, if we go any further you'll have to take your long nails off._ For that comment she takes off one of his nails with a pair of pliers. That - that's a shocker, he has to admit. 

 _Still_. He's high and can't stop laughing so it's alright. He'll get out of this situation eventually, he just has to wait for the right moment.

But then the high wears off. He feels the withdrawals settle in, hears that Russian ghost ramble for hours, and he can't ignore the pain. His nerves jump with each sound around him and his mouth runs off in a last attempt to defend himself, even if it ends up with him blinking himself back to consciousness. His joke about no one noticing he's even gone makes his ribs wind tighter with panic because it's been, what, ten hours now. He's had multiple flashbacks - _thanks_ , _Reginald_ \- and they just keep getting more vivid, the Russian woman more loud, and he's also starving. If not for the water boarding then his throat would be as dry as a desert by now.

They're not coming and he knows it, Ben knows it, Pink (Cha-Cha, apparently) knows it, Blue (Hazel) knows it. Hell, the Russian woman knows it, if the looks she sends him are worth anything. He can't get his damn hands out of the duct tape holding him down and he wishes he'd tried more when they first brought him into the motel room. At least then his strength hadn't been sapped by hours of endless torture and withdrawals. Now he knows there's no chance. The only chance he has is if they keep him here for so long he loses more weight and his wrists get skinny enough to twist them out of the duct tape. Unlikely, though. They'd kill him before he had the chance.

When they leave him in that closet, off to do some bullshit while high off his own chocolate, Klaus turns to Ben. The walls are closing in on him and he can't talk because of the gag on his mouth, but Klaus knows Ben's had enough experience of trying to talk to Klaus while he's too high to remember how to breathe so he'll be able to make out some words from his pathetic, muffled whimpers.

"They're gonna kill me," he tells Ben. Or, he tries to, at least.

Ben's standing behind him, but at this he moves in front of him so they can look at one another. Ben looks... sad. Frustrated that he can't do anything.

"They won't," he tells Klaus, and Klaus shakes his head vigorously.

"They will, they will," Klaus insists. "Eventually. No one's coming. I'm gonna die here. They're really not coming, Ben."

Ben doesn't say anything. They both know that even if his siblings have noticed Klaus is gone, they won't think anything of it. Klaus has always been running off since they were children, disappearing and not telling anyone when he's leaving or where he's going. He's unreliable and he's never really given them a reason to think he's anywhere but a drug house. Klaus can't blame them. He brought that part upon himself.

Still. Klaus would like to imagine they know him a little bit better than that. Even if Klaus has never been the most violent one, even if he'd run off in fights to hide, he never would have left his siblings after something like that before checking in on them. Surely they know that. Then again, they're not fourteen anymore. Klaus is an adult and they've not seen one another in years. 

There's nothing he can do, then. Maybe they'll go out and find Five, and if they bring Five back here then at least he knows Five will be able to get them out of here. Or maybe he'll just get himself out of here. Klaus wouldn't blame him. 

 

 

They return hours later, overjoyed to see that the maid hadn't found Klaus in the closet and that he's still there, bound and gagged and half-delirious.

"Your little brother wasn't there," Cha-Cha tells him, crouching down in front of his chair. "No trace of him at that lab, looking for that eye. We did leave a message, but maybe he isn't interested. So, until we can get our next lead on him, you're sticking with us." 

He can't help the moan of despair that leaves his lips, the way his head tilts back and his eyes close. That had been his only chance. He has no idea where else Five might be.

He's brought back by Hazel pulling his head up by his sweat-dampened hair. He thinks Cha-Cha looks more intimidating without the mask.

"And," she says, rising to her feet. She turns around to the kettle, speaking as she fills it with water and puts it on to boil. "This is for wasting our time."

 

 

Klaus passes out a record of three times, and they call their little venting session over when darkness approaches him for the fourth time. He hears them moving aside, seeming satisfied by letting their frustrations out on him for the time being and now moving on to talk about what takeaway they should have, and he slumps in his chair.

 

 

They're still with him when he wakes up, and he's not back in that closet. The room smells like Chinese takeaway and his stomach twists in both hunger and nausea. He still has his back to the beds so he can't see them, but he can hear them eating.

"Think he's with us again," Hazel comments around a mouthful of rice, and Cha-Cha hums.

"You take care of it," she says, and Klaus' shoulders tense. They're going to choke him out again, drown him again, burn him again, they're going to -

The shitty motel bed squeaks as Hazel groans but gets to his feet and he sets a hand on Klaus' shoulder. It makes Klaus jump in a way he'd never admit, but he doesn't move to hurt him.

"Now, I'm not cleaning up anymore mess from you so this is your one chance for who knows how long; do you need the bathroom?" 

Klaus blinks his shock back down. Out of everything his mind had supplied him - which had been a horrifyingly long list, by the way - that had not been on it. However, he does need. Klaus had thought they'd simply wait until he made a mess of himself; god knows he hadn't before, when he was too high or drunk to control himself, so while it might not have humiliated him as much as they probably hoped it would have, it certainly would have hit him hard. Or maybe it would have been worse; he was walking a hair-thin tightrope above another breakdown.

Klaus takes the chance. He nods more eagerly than one should be to use the bathroom, and then there's a knife and he thought well, it was too good to be true. But instead of landing in his gut or something, it cuts the tape on his wrists. He had expected relief from that, had been looking forwards to the relief from it, but instead it brings pain and a sore moan. He hasn't got time though because Hazel is forcing him to his feet. It's not surprising that his knees buckle and eyes roll back. 

Hazel catches him roughly, no thought to his weeping wounds, and all but hauls him to the bathroom with Klaus' feet dragging uselessly underneath him. Hazel stays in the bathroom as Klaus props himself up on the wall and barely stays standing long enough to be able to actually use the toilet, and then he's being dragged back to the blood stained seat and he's ashamed to say he doesn't even fight when Hazel holds his wrist back to the chair's arms and ties them down once more. Hazel disappears behind him again to continue eating, and as he and Cha-Cha chat again, Klaus passes out once more.

 

 

Something taps his cheek gently but persistently, and then - ow. His head lolls to the side and he blinks his eyes open. Fingers scratch his cheek and then the duct tape's pulled off his mouth roughly. Klaus' tongue dashes out across his dry lips. Cha-Cha is in front of him again, and Klaus cringes away from her.

"What?" He groans, tipping his head back. When he looks at the clock they moved into his view, it shows him he's been missing for fifteen hours. Their tactic of moving it so he can see the time tick by while he's still here works, and it makes his stomach twist.

"Your nap time is up," she tells him with sick enthusiasm. "We still need to find Five. Time's running out."

Klaus closes his eyes. "I've told you everything I know, please," he moans, "I don't know where else he'd be."

"Then what about the others. _They_ might know," she suggests, and Klaus shakes his head.

"Five's unpredictable. They won't know either. I'm telling you, god. Just let me go... _please_."

Cha-Cha almost looks amused. She tsks, standing up and stretching.

"Very well," she says. She disappears behind him for a moment. A knife cuts the duct tape on his wrists and Hazel's dragging him across the floor, not letting him attempt to get his feet under him. He holds Klaus' shoulders to keep him down while Cha-Cha runs the bath with cold water. They don't move and don't speak as it fills up. Klaus' hands are pulled behind his back and tied together there, and as Cha-Cha turns the tap off, bath finally full, Klaus shakes his head.

"Stop, please, I don't have anything more to tell you -"

Hazel pushes him forwards until his knees his the tub and then he pushes his head over the edge and into the freezing water. He keeps a steady hand in his hair, holding his head under the water and a knee to his back keeps Klaus in place despite his thrashing that only increased the longer he went without air. He spluttered, swallowing some water and inhaling some, and he feels his head begin to go fuzzy again before he's yanked back out of the water and gasping air. Then he's back under, then out, then under, out, under, out, under, out, until his body's shaking violently and his nails have scratched his back. He's hyperventilating, trying to draw air into his lungs. His shoulders ache from thrashing so much, wrists raw. 

He's dragged back through from the bathroom by his hair, knees scraping as he tries to keep up, and he's back on the seat, wrists back on the arms of the chair, and there's the flick of a lighter and then he feels searing pain between his shoulders and the flame drags down his spine. Duct tape covers his mouth again before he can yell out, and he catches Ben's eyes. Ben had promised not to leave him, and he was glad for that, even if it must be hard for him to watch. The Russian lady sobs and Klaus arches his back away from Pink to no avail.

 

 

 

"You've really lost your attitude," Cha-Cha comments once when she's taking a break from beating him and tears run down from his eyes. He's freezing cold, body shaking, and every movement makes him feel sick. 

"Fuck off," Klaus bites but he can't bring himself to look into her eyes. Cha-Cha laughs nastily at him. The knife in her hand glints from the motel's flickering light, and she dances it along his arm before digging in and pulling it down, leaving a long, thin cut along his entire left arm, down to his fingers, only pausing due to the tape holding his wrists down. Out of seemingly nowhere, Hazel's fist collides with the back of his head hard enough it leaves his ears ringing. 

Fingers tighten in his hair and pulls his head back, and Cha-Cha studies him as if plotting what to do next. She ignites a lighter and holds the blade above it, watching as it turns red hot. She wanders around his side, and then she places the tip under his eye. He can hear the sizzle as it burns his skin, feel it dance around the bone of his eye socket. 

"Maybe blinding will send a message," she muses, and Klaus can only press himself back against the chair and gasp behind the tape, muttering incoherent pleas. A tear drop burns his freshly burnt skin.

He screws his eyes shut, unwilling to stare at the blade a centimetre away from his eyes. He can take the beatings, the drowning, the burning; whatever, but he isn't sure he could handle _that_. Never being able to see again.

"You don't like that idea?" She asks cruelly, and Klaus whimpers, chest rapidly rising and falling. He doesn't risk shaking his head for fear of moving the blade. The blade moves away and her hand connects with his face. "God, sometimes I wish you'd stop crying. It's pathetic," she sneers, and Klaus pries his eyes open. She hands the blade to Hazel behind him, swapping it out for something else, and Klaus' heart drops as he watches the pliers make a reappearance.

As she calmly lines up the pliers with his trembling pinky finger, she speaks. "I'm sure you've probably been in worse situations, with all that poison you put in yourself. Maybe we should just leave you alone with some drugs and let you ruin yourself." To finish her sentence, she yanks back, pulling the painted nail off in a quick, clean motion. Klaus cries out immediately, doubling over and curling his hand into a fist. His shoulders shake and he sobs, ducking his face down. 

She reaches out, roughly pulling his hand flat and lining up the pliers to the next nail. Klaus shakes his head, moaning pleads. It clamps down, and -

The phone goes.

It startles everyone in the room, including Ben and the Russian woman and the other woman with her throat slit. They all turn to stare at it and Cha-Cha stands up, jerking her head to Klaus. He barely has a minute to react before that chain, or rope, or whatever they had used before was around his neck. Not tight enough to choke him, but tight enough to make breathing much harder.

Cha-Cha answers the phone. He can hear muffled voices on the other end and Cha-Cha's lips twitch upwards.

"I'm glad you got our message," she says, and Klaus knows it's them. His siblings.

"Oh, yeah, we still have him. He's right here - I could let you say hello, but that would ruin it, wouldn't it?" She toys with them first, voice cold and dangerous. 

"You know what we want. Come alone, and we might let him live." Her eyes flick down to Klaus. After a moment she speaks up once more. "You know what methods we use." 

She's silent for several moments, listening to the other person on the line, and then she walks over to Klaus and rips off his duct tape gag, shoving the phone against his face.

"Klaus?" Asks Five, and Klaus drags in a ragged breath into his tortured lungs.

"Tha - that's my name," he jokes weakly. He can hear curses in the background and automatically knows Diego's there.

"Where are you?" Five asks and Klaus rakes his brain for the name of the motel.

"It's - at the -"

Hazel's reflexes are faster, tightening the thing around his neck and cutting off what he was about to say, and Cha-Cha takes the phone back although she puts speaker on.

Diego's cursing in the background, which is nice. He's worried.

Duct tape goes back around his mouth and Klaus groans in frustration. At least the thing around his neck loosens slightly. 

"I'll propose a trade. You for your brother. We just need to have a little conversation, Five," Cha-Cha says, and he hears Five scoff.

"I know you better than that, Cha-Cha," states Five.

"Then you know I will kill your brother, and I won't hesitate."

There's a moment of silence on the other end and she kneels slightly in front of Klaus to be eye-level.

"I've had long enough to have a nice conversation with him. He knows I'm serious, too, don't you?" She asks. When Klaus doesn't respond she simply backhands him.

"Alright," Five snaps. "Where?"

"Midnight," she answers almost immediately, and then spits out some address.

"Fine," hisses Five. "I'll be there."

"I look forwards to it," she says, and then hangs up. She turns back to Klaus and Hazel.

"We've got some time to kill before we go," she states. The wire around his neck tightens and Cha-Cha's lighter flickers.

 

 

Klaus comes to find that they kill their time by simply beating him. Occasionally Cha-Cha burns him, but she seems mostly to settle on simply punching and kicking him. When his vision is clear enough he watches the clock as time ticks by. They have plenty of time, and Klaus knows by the time they cut his wrists off the chair that he has broken bones. Ribs, he knows, and possibly his collarbone. His fingers, too, and they had taken a couple of more nails, carrying off from where they'd left off. She teases him with the idea that they'll still take his eyes, but she doesn't go through with it, much to his pleasure. They cut him out of the chair and Cha-Cha says she'll cut his tongue off if he makes a noise, but it doesn't matter anyway because he falls immediately and hits his head off the table next to the door, and everything goes dark.

 

 

 **********

 

 

Diego is furious. He knows he's part to blame, but still. The fact that none of them noticed - no, didn't care - that Klaus disappeared after those two psychos shot up the house is awful. 

After finding Five blacked out in the library they had taken him back to Diego's place in the boxing ring. They had waited hours for him to wake up and then Five had disappeared for another hour before returning to them with a grim face.

"Those people that attacked the house," he had said, "I think they have on of our siblings."

Then, and only then, had they realised;  _Klaus._

Apparently they had left a number on Five's van and it hadn't taken him long to put two and two together.

Then, with Diego encouraging him to do so, he had phoned them.

The woman's voice had made his hair stand on edge, but he couldn't get the way Klaus' voice had rasped, and then cut off into a choking wheeze, out of his mind. 

"You're not going alone," Diego says almost immediately once the woman hangs up the phone.

Five gives him a look, rolling his eyes. "They're not lying," says Five, "they will kill Klaus. I'm surprised they haven't already."

Diego's nostrils flared, but then Luther speaks up.

"We're coming with you," he states, leaving little room for argument. Diego thinks even he feels a little guilty. 

"Are you idiots?" Five hisses, eyes narrowed like slits.

"We're not arguing this," Diego says, and he pats down all his knives and heads to the door. "Come on, it's a while to get there. We shouldn't be late."

Diego suspects that Five is too tired to teleport, or he would have done it anyway. Or maybe he did want the backup. Either way, they find themselves in Diego's car quickly enough while Five briefs them on the two attackers; Cha-Cha and Hazel.

"They're the best of the best," he says, "extremely skilled and dangerous. You're making a mistake coming with me," he says, shaking his head in the backseat. 

"Well, we've fought them once," Diego dismisses, "we know what to expect, Five. We'll get them this time."

Luther seems to agree with him, nodding alongside him, and Five simply huffs a breath and shakes his head, but he doesn't say anything else.

 

 

They arrive at the place they were told to meet them earlier than necessary, but Diego isn't taking chances. They stay in the car, tense and quiet, until a car heads down the road towards them. Five sits up a little, eyes narrowed before he gets out and glares at them. " _Stay_ in the car," he hisses at them, closing the door down heavily. He and Luther exchange a look and do not do that. Five glares at them, but then the two psychos from earlier are coming out of the car. 

"I thought I said to come alone," Cha-Cha, the women, calls. She has a gun evident in her belt and the threat is clear enough. Their familiar masks hide their faces still.

"Yeah, I tried," Five simply responds, and they take a few steps forwards to stare at one another.

"Where is he?" Asks Five, looking to the car. Diego can't see anyone in the car and he shares a look with Luther again, and they brace themselves for a fight, having fallen into a trap. 

The man, Hazel, walks to the back of the car and opens the fucking trunk. Diego feels fury rush through his veins again and his hands curl into fists. He watches as he sees first a mess of hair poke out, and then Hazel's dragging Klaus forwards.

Klaus is basically on his hands and knees, legs buckling so much that Diego knows if not for Hazel's hand around his bicep, he would be on the floor. His wrists are tied together with duct tape, and it's also around his mouth and there's a blind fold around his eyes. He's only wearing a towel and Diego feels a little knocked by that, but he calms when he realises it's one of the academy's towels. However, the rest of his appearance leaves his mouth dry.

He's looking around wildly as if expecting to dislodge the blindfold. He doesn't, unsurprisingly. His neck is a ring of bruises and cuts and burns, and his upper body is just littered in them, too. From the way he moves and holds himself Diego knows there's broken bones, and there's burn marks peeking out of the blindfold that scares Diego.

Hazel lets go of him and he drops like a bag of bricks to the floor, restrained hands trying, and failing, to catch himself, and everyone cringes at that. Cha-Cha gestures to him.

"Still alive," she says, and then pulls out her gun. She steps to Klaus' side and presses it to the back of his head, and Klaus, who had previously been groaning and trying to get up, freezes immediately. Bloody fingers scratch the floor.

Five raises his hands, stepping forwards. "You've got me," he says, "so let him go." 

He looks at Luther and Diego, and when Cha-Cha steps back, gun now trained on Five, the two of them hurry to get to Klaus. Diego's stomach drops when he _flinches_.

"H-hey, Klaus, it's just me and Luther. We-we're gonna get you in the car, o-okay?" He tells him, warily watching the two psychos only feet from him. He feels too tense, the urge to get up and defend himself and his siblings overwhelming, but Klaus is shaking and sobbing against his gag, reaching out with both hands to grab Luther. Diego hurries in front to open the door for him while Luther picks Klaus up like he weighs nothing, and Klaus clings to Luther, head lolling, moaning at each step. Luther slides into the backseat with Klaus and Diego gets into the driving seat, and then hurries to watch Five, still talking to the two of them. Cha-Cha hasn't put her gun down but Hazel seems distracted. He could probably get a knife there and cause enough of a distraction for Five to run...

He doesn't have to. By the time he's pulled a knife out, Five is in the car.

" _Drive_!" He yells, and Diego _steps_ on it. The car lets out an unhealthy screech and gunshots echo around them, pinging off the car, and Klaus groans at every swerve and bump. Luther has taken the blindfold off at least. Diego thinks, sickly, that this is probably the closest the two of them have ever been.

"Can I take the rest off?" He asks a wide-eyed Klaus - Diego notices with relief that the burns he had seen hadn't gone right to his eyes - and he nods his head eagerly, holding his hands out. He peels the tape off his mouth as gently as he can, and Diego hands him a knife (Klaus flinches) and he uses it to cut his wrists free. His wrists are red and raw and bloody, and Klaus holds his hands close to his chest. Although he's trying to be quiet, he really isn't, and Diego can hear him crying. Luther looks awkward, simply trying to comfort him with his presence, and Diego has to force himself to keep his eyes on the road when his sobs turn to hysterical laughter and back to sobs.

By the time they reach the academy, Klaus is unconscious and Diego feels like the worlds worst brother. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly thinking of writing a second chapter just of them helping take care of him in recovery. Who knows uwu


End file.
